magna water pump headaches

[raten]

first post-greetings all

wow, the workshop manual for the magna 1994 3l v6 is unavailable to the public. The haynes manual is riddled with dis-mis info.

Water leak. Engine over heated badly.

Had to change water pump, which, of course, is the least accessible, having to take off drive belts, timing belt (which was so worn it snapped while trying to loosen crankshaft pulley bolt.)
The manual gave vague instructions, leaving out the most important points.
A mechanic told me how to lock the engine from turning by taking off the starter motor and jamming the gear. Great, thank you, it worked.

OK, then the new timing belt, (after finally getting the new water pump fixed in place,) being continuous loop, revealed that the engine mount had to be removed!

Ok, the engine drops!!!

Jammed it up with a shovel to spread load on ground and a flat wide bit of iron to engine. Got the mount off, timing belt on, lots of fiddling and praying that the teeth were right.
A couple of revolutions showed TDC's all ok.
Put the mounts back and lowered the car so the bolts came up and raised the engine the last bit by tightening bolts. Put all else back.

Surprise, by 1 am the car kicked into action. (likely got neighbours riled ) Took it for a drive. Squealing when turning and when air con on. Simple, more tension on drive belts. Done. Happy and relieved, plus prob about a thou or so more in pocket than if a mechanic (who CAN buy the proper workshop manual from Mitzubitsy) had done it.
'
Q's :

Next, the over heating seems to have damaged something so the low idle fluctuates and engine stops when at lights when engine is hot. Suspect vaccum??? Temporary fix, increased idle speed.

The plastic radiator tank (top) is held on by lugs, prob alu maybe stainless.

Hesitant to remove to rod radiator out. Don't want to risk damaging lugs???

(Don't Mitz want to sell cars? Where to get a proper workshop manual?)

 

[Belle427]

not sure what you mean by rod radiator out?
how badly did the engine overheat initially?

 

[raten]

I mean to clean out the pipes on the radiator manually with a thin bit of metal - by first removing the top plastic tank of the radiator with the radiator in place.

I bought the cheapest flat pliers I could get figuring the metal would be soft, and a round file and a flat file, and shaped the nose of the pliars into a 'over bite' hook on one jaw and a round one on the other with the idea of gently gripping the tabs holding the tank with the overbite and rollling it off on the round jaw hoping this will minimise any fatigue. My idea is (with a couple of small clamps) to work my way around undoing the tabs, cleaning out the pipes and then with clamps pressing tank on again work my way around rolling the tabs back into place without having fatigued anything. This is a major concern as apparently I can't get a replacement tab strip.

The hottest it got was enough to melt the plastic timing belt covers near the water pump. the temp guage is elsewhere, so when it boiled dry the temp was prob very high in various places, I think I noticed the leap in temp early enough to save the engine, but surrounding parts suffered I think.

Interestingly, the timing has settled into a lower rev less fluctuating speed, but stil needs looking at.

 

[Burnerman]

The only thing that you can really do is to clean the rad core out with a hose pipe, maybe using one of the approved radiator flushes...physical inteference will almost certainly puncture the core.
Perhaps your unstable idling is due to an air leak into the rubber pipes in the manifold area - but thats only a guess.
John

 

[Belle427]

if it got hot enough to melt the timing belt cover its odds on its done more damage, does it have aluminium heads?